AUSTIN — Texas Governor Rick Perry constantly talks about how often he goes to California on what he calls “hunting trips” to recruit California businesses to come to Texas.

Leading state officials in California have recently begun to ferociously counterattack the notion of the ‘Texas Miracle,’ pointing out with a certain amount of schadenfreude just how bad Texas’ budget problems are. According to a budget analysis done by the Houston Chronicle’s Texas Politics blog Texas’ budget crisis is proportionally as bad as California’s.

California Treasurer Bill Lockyer told Los Angeles Times’ Evan Halper with evident satisfaction that “someone just turned the lights on in the bar, and the sexiest state doesn’t look so pretty anymore.”

So, it wasn’t all that surprising that a room just off the Governor’s office was packed with reporters and TV cameras who were eagerly waiting to see an uncommon sight0 at the Texas Capitol — Gov. Perry and a delegation of politicians from California meeting in the same room and leaving the verbal artillery at home.

While it wasn’t surprising that the exchanges between some of the most conservative members of the California Assembly and Texas’ Tea-Party backed governor were quite cordial, the tone also extended to the interactions between Perry and California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Both men stuck mostly to the talking points that they ran their campaigns on. For Perry, it meant reiterating his belief that Texas is successful because of low taxes, business-friendly regulation and tort reform.

For Newsom, who used the same platform for his unsuccessful run against Jerry Brown for the Democratic nomination for governor as well as his campaign for lieutenant governor, it meant talking about his jobs agenda.

“Candidly, the reason I came out here was out of frustration and admiration with some of the work that you’ve been doing,” Newsom said. “I’m sick and tired of Governor Perry coming to California all of the time.